Lady of the Lake
by Lenore483
Summary: Their love was like a boat. Tomione


**Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Round 7, I'm Chaser 3 on the Falmouth Falcons.**

My Pairing was "Clever Mudblood" aka, Tom Marvolo Riddle and Hermione Granger.

My prompts:

Poem - Ship by Carol Ann Duffy (I interpreted the poem to mean that the ship is a symbol of love, and used it as a symbol for Hermione and Tom's love in this story)

Creature - boggart

Dialogue - "You're crazy!" / "Were you ever under the impression that I was normal?"

 **Warning! A lot of nautical terms/ in this story, you might wanna use the restroom before reading it.**

 **Xx**

 **Word count: 2990**

I used a lot of poems and songs for inspiration. If you recognize it, it's not mine. If you wanna know them I can update this story after the judging is over, or just pm or review me and I'll answer with what it was.

 _also written for versatility contest: fanfiction tropes you have been avoiding - time travel!AU_

* * *

Hermione had set sail to a different time so she could right the wrongs that had been made. Like many before her, the war had made her want to save as many people as she could — like Harry had.

Hermione knew that the captain should always go down with the ship, letting his crew go on the life rafts, but Harry had jumped ship before the storm could hit. He had tried to save everyone by facing Voldemort alone and wound up dead. They hadn't been able to weather the storm without their leader.

Her course was set, but just as Columbus had found America instead of India, Hermione had gone adrift, finding her feet on unexpected soil. She had tried to go back to the first war against Voldemort but had found another war entirely — World War II. She wasn't just beached in this time, she was shipwrecked and desperate. Her solution was to set a new course towards the only place that felt like home: Hogwarts.

She thought she had found a good place to cast her anchor for now. Her guard was down; she never even noticed Tom Riddle, Headboy and charming psychopath.

* * *

Tom regarded the new girl with interest, yet she didn't even look his way. It was curious, every other girl would react in some way to his stares; all but a few sighed and melted when he paid them attention.

When he first approached her, he saw the clouds gathering in her eyes, anger directed at him when he had done nothing to her—at least not yet. When he introduced himself, the clouds turned into a storm, threatening to kill him.

He did not give up; he was relentless and determined to find what secrets she hid. It would take time, but surely it would be worth it. Like a pirate at sea, he wanted to plunder the richness of her mind; he wanted to discover the treasure buried beneath her hostile stare.

She seemed stolen from another life to appear in his. He felt like a man in the desert who had been unknowingly delirious with thirst until he felt the first patter of rain against his skin when she first responded to his advances.

Hermione was enchanting, he enjoyed her company, and would follow her to the edges of the map. He found himself kneeling down to help her reach his level — slowing himself down to let her catch up with his train of thought. Then, at other times, he looked into her eyes and read her mind to find her thoughts running much faster than his, and he was once more captivated by her.

It wasn't long before he relied on her company to find himself at peace. She returned his gesture with simple signs of affection: a smile when she saw him or a simple brush against his arm when she had a question.

* * *

She thought Tom would be like a monsoon, but he was a steady stream, a river flowing through the landscape slowly to reach its target. Hermione hadn't even realized his intent until she found herself reacting to the ebb and flow of his conversation and missing his dark blue eyes glinting in mischief as she gave a particularly vicious retort.

When Hogwarts shut down over the holidays, Hermione stayed in London in an abandoned house. The structure was completely destroyed, but with a few charms to keep Muggles away and hide the appearance, it would be enough.

When she wasn't trying to keep up the charade, Hermione took long walks around London. It was horrible to see the town destroyed by the Blitz, but in between the rubble and decay, she found places of solitude and happiness.

One day in a park she ran across Tom, and they walked together by the lake in peaceful companionship.

A kid was playing with a toy ship, his mother sitting on the bench nearby with a watchful eye.

She thought about her father and how they had gone sailing together when she was a kid. It made her miss the life she'd once had. Her heart sunk at the thought and her eyes shied away from the kid laughing at a simple pleasure while his mother wept — most likely she had gotten news from the front.

Her eyes landed on Tom; her beacon of light in a miserable existence. He was smiling down at her, a wide smile that reached his eyes. Her heart felt like it was soaring in the clouds, and she felt herself answering his smile with her own.

For a moment that was suspended in time — a moment she would remember forever — they stayed like that. She had never felt anything like this before, this wave of emotion that was both happy and overwhelming in its intensity.

Then realization hit, and she was scared beyond measure. How could he make her feel like this? How could she love a monster?

* * *

The teacher brought out a Boggart, and the class all lined up to see what their biggest fears were. Tom's fear had been death in the shape of his own corpse before him. He looked at Hermione with expectancy as the next in line; he couldn't make his own corpse seem cheerful so he hoped she would take over for him.

She took a step forward while Tom stepped to the side — their actions synchronized like practiced dancers. He was curious to see the shape of her biggest fear, for all that they talked and spent time together, he didn't know much about her.

The watery, dead eyes of his corpse turned to look at her, and then the creature transformed into a tiny boat sailing quietly towards her. Before Hermione had time to raise her wand to cast the spell, the entire class roared with laughter at her pitiful fear.

"Your boggart is a toy ship?" Tom asked. His lip twitched while he was trying to contain his mirth, and he stood facing a little away from her, ready to turn if he suddenly broke down and started to laugh.

She looked like she was drowning in the laughter and his eyes. She took a step back, and then another before she turned and ran out the door.

* * *

"What was that about?" Tom asked when he finally managed to corner her. His fingers brushed against hers as he sat down next to her. She shivered at the contact and tried to convince herself it was in disgust, not delight. But her boggart had brought the truth to the surface, and she couldn't deny it any longer.

"Remember in the park?

"Yes?"

"I am afraid of that feeling that fluttered in my chest when you smiled at me."

"You're afraid you might love me?"

"Tom!"

"What?"

"What have I told you about reading my mind?"

"How am I supposed to know what you feel if you won't let me cheat?"

"You're just gonna have to trust me."

"Like you trust me not to break your heart?"

"That's different."

"How is that different?"

"You're crazy!"

"Were you ever under the impression that I was normal?"

"No, you're a psychopath, I looked it up."

Tom smiled at her, that warm smile that was completely the same as the lake. A smile unlike any she had ever seen on his face; it was reserved for her, that smile. Once more, she felt the butterflies erupting in her chest.

"Of course you did," he said and kissed her gently on her nose. In response, she wrinkled it and tried to look at him like she was annoyed.

"Tom, what if you—"

"Just have a little faith, Hermione."

She regarded him then, stopping their conversation to read his intent in his eyes, but she didn't know Legilimency like Tom, so she could only guess what went on behind those eyes. She wondered if her footsteps would ripple in time or if Tom would wash them away like the tide washes away footprints in the sand. Maybe he could change? Or maybe she was just fooling herself; you can't change the flow of the ocean, the tide will always come.

* * *

"I'm happy you love me," he admitted one day while they were studying together. When he chanced a look at Hermione, she looked as if he had just dunked her head under water and she was struggling for air.

"How so?" she asked. He could see that her calm words were no testimony to how she felt since her fingers clenched around the book she was reading and shook as she turned a page.

"Like Ran, the Norse Goddess, you have flung your net and captured my heart forever."

She looked into his eyes then, and he saw the stream of thoughts running through her head, but most were too fast to grasp for him; it was similar to trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. Yet he tried like he always did. His desire had shifted from conquering the world to understanding her.

"I have drowned you?" she joked. Ran was a goddess that drowned sailors by pulling them to the depths with a net. She had a husband, Ægir, who didn't seem to do much other than throw a party for the other Gods to charm them. Ægir was like Tom in that way, charming and manipulative.

"I am drowning in you," he returned and kissed her before she could interject with any more jokes.

When her fingers skimmed across his chest he felt the currents of emotions stronger than anything he had felt before. Every touch from her invoked feelings of grandeur in him, and he finally knew that he loved her.

The realization hit him like a tornado, and he opened his eyes as they continued to kiss. She didn't notice, and when he tugged at her hair, she simply moaned like it was a part of their game.

Tom struggled to surface from the depth of his own emotions, but the fear of what they meant had made him regain his footing on solid ground. His mind had returned to logic and he knew what must be done; their relationship could not continue.

* * *

They were walking by the lake at night, a wind went by, murmuring warnings in Hermione's ear with its cold draft, but she ignored it and the shiver that followed. In the past — or in the future; she was still unsure what to call it — she had walked alone by the lake and found it wild and terrifying like an open grave waiting for a solitary soul to trip and die in it.

Tom stopped when they reached a bank far away from Hogwarts, and Hermione turned to regard him. His posture changed from relaxed to threatening, and something about the way he started to advance on her made her feel like a fish caught in a net.

"What's going on, Tom?"

"I thought you would have figured it out by now."

"Figured what out?" She matched him step by step, looking behind her intermittently while looking at Tom. They were getting close to the shore of the Black Lake, and she felt dread overcome her and wash away that lovely feeling of calm that she'd had with him just minutes ago. He had planned something; his eyes were that stormy dark blue again that always spoke of ill intentions.

"I am like Ægir, but not in the way you thought."

She was trapped between the devil and the deep black lake, with no one in sight and not a light on in the castle. She had thought a midnight walk would be romantic — the stars and the lapping of water against the shore and only the two of them. Now her heart felt like it was jumping into her throat to suffocate her, for her mind had finally convinced it of what she should have known all along; Tom was going to kill her, and she had been stupid enough to leave her wand inside.

"You don't seem to know the rest of the myth surrounding him. Ægir also had a passion for dragging men to their deaths; much like Ran, he liked to see them suffer." Hermione gulped at his words and tried to think of anything that could get her out, her mind racing to find a way to overcome her foe and survive. But he was a tsunami coming for her fast, and she hadn't seen the trouble when the water began to draw back.

"What I found most fascinating was the way he could control the ocean," he said, and at his words, the water behind her seemed to bubble, "and control the creatures within."

She did not dare look behind her at what rose from the water, for inside Tom's eyes she could see it's reflection. In the light of the moon and underneath the stars, the Giant Squid seemed more a Kraken than a benign creature. Tom smiled a terrifying smile that made shivers run down her spine as she felt a tentacle wrap around her waist.

"Goodbye, Voldemort," she said as she was yanked away from him and plunged into the depths. The last she saw of the one she had loved despite herself was an astonished man underneath the moonlight. She had never called him that or told him about what she knew about him; not even in her mind had she recalled the events that lead to her flight to the past.

The Kraken — she referred to it as such as she could not call the creature something simple as 'Giant Squid' when it was dragging her to her death — would not relent its hold on her but she would not, could not, stop struggling to get free. A particular push against it had her slipping a little from its grasp at last, but the Kraken tightened its hold on her. With the tighter grip, her lungs relented her last breath. Bubbles of air floated quickly to the surface, taking her last hope of survival with them.

Her head felt like it was about to explode while her body and mind screamed for air.

They had arrived at the ocean floor, and she was tied to a rope. Tom must have set it up since it fastened on its own around her right ankle when she was dragged to it. In front of her, she could make out the window to a Slytherin dorm room — Tom's bedroom. The Kraken left her there alone while she fought against the urge to breathe and tried to get free of the rope. Her attempts only resulted in fatigue before she lost control of her mind and gasped, filling her lungs up with water.

As she lay dying on the bottom of the ocean, she knew her eyes would remain open and looking into his bedroom for eternity, but her soul would descend into Hell for loving a monster as cruel as Tom. One last hope sprung up within her when she looked desperately up at the dim light from the surface; maybe Tom would be so curious about her knowledge of his chosen name that he would come and rescue her.

Their love wasn't a big boat after all; no, in the end, their love was a toy boat like the one in the park. At the first turn of the winds, it cantered, and she was flung from it to drown in the dark depths alone. Tom had proven once again that he was similar to Harry by abandoning the ship before the rest of the crew knew that a storm was coming. Unlike Tom, Harry had been doing it with the best of intentions, hoping to save them all by sacrificing himself — Tom abandoned it knowing that he would be the only survivor.

The only crew on the boat had been her this time, watching the horizon as the sun set, unaware of the trouble astern. Her heartbeat had been steady and calm like the ocean before the storm hits; she wasn't aware that the winds had changed.

Unlike Harry, she had eventually gone down with the ship.

She no longer thought that Tom Riddle was the God of the Ocean; she thought he was the ocean itself. Sailing the high seas was dangerous, but Hermione had been brave and determined to comprehend its mysteries.

At least she had discovered the most important thing; his mysteries were not a dark paradise but a horror show unlike anything else.

* * *

Tom gazed out his window and reveled in that he could be lucky enough to have such a lovely view. The Lady in the Lake floated outside, hair long and flowing to and fro in the currents at the bottom, her eyes glassy, and her white, translucent skin making her appearance even more ethereal to him.

She had been the siren that could have lured him away from his boat into the ocean, and he had made a decision to stop her before it could happen. Her love had made him feel like he could float and surpass any obstacle, but it had distracted him from his ultimate goals, and that he could not stand.

Yet, he still admired her and wanted to show his reverence and devotion in some way. He had plans to make the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw his Horcrux, and his Lady should bear it like the Lady of Shallot bore a crown of pearls. He supposed, if he held another Horcrux, for example the cup of Hufflepuff, he would be the fisher king. In that they would be united for eternity, for as long as he lived and breathed air, her lungs would be filled with water, and he could gaze upon her form.

For resignedly in the melancholy waters lay his enigma, his Hermione.


End file.
